Star Realms Academy

And if you are as well, perhaps you’ve been in a similar predicament as I have. My youngest just wasn’t ready for a deck builder like Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game or Shards of Infinity. So I had to take her to deck builder school. Or more accurately, Star Realms Academy.

Star Realms Academy is billed as “My First Deckbuilding Game” and is for two players 7+. It is designed by Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle and is published by Wacky Wizard Games, Wise Wizard Games’ new family-focused imprint. Wise Wizard, of course, is the publisher of Star Realms, the sci-fi deck builder that Star Realms Academy is based on.

Setup

It shouldn’t surprise you that setup is simple in Star Realms Academy. You place the main game board in the middle of the table, then shuffle the Shop Deck and deal five cards to fill the Shop Row spaces on the board. Create a supply of Coins and Combat tokens in easy reach of both players.

Give each player a reference card and a player board with 15 health tokens. Each player will then take their six-card starting deck and shuffle it. Then, they draw three cards to form their starting hand. The older player is the first player; the younger player takes a Coin from the supply and puts it on their player board.

Gameplay

Much like the setup, gameplay in Star Realms Academy is designed to be as easy to understand and as accessible as possible. You can take as many actions on your turn as you are able:

• Play cards from your hand for their abilities,
• Use the primary ability of any Bases you have in play,
• Use any possible Ally abilities on cards you’ve played,
• Use Coins to purchase cards from the Shop Row, and
• Attack your opponent with any Combat tokens you’ve generated that turn.

At the end of your turn, you discard any Ship cards you’ve played that turn and any cards left in your hand. (Bases stay in play in front of you until they are destroyed.)

Draw three new cards from your deck. Then it’s your opponent’s turn.

When it comes to purchasing cards, there are two main types of cards in Star Realms Academy: Ships and Bases. Ship cards are played from your hand to utilize their abilities and then are put in your discard pile when your turn ends.

Base cards stay in play in front of you until they are destroyed. You can use their primary ability every turn while they are in play. They also protect your player board’s health. You cannot be attacked until every Base card in front of you is destroyed.

The game ends when one player has lost all of their health icons on their game board.

Abilities

There are four main abilities in Star Realms Academy listed on Ship and Base cards. The silver Cards icon allows you to draw that number of cards from your deck. The green Health token icon allows you to regain that number of Health tokens on your player board. The gold Coin icon tells you to take that number of Coins from the supply. The red Combat token tells you to take that number of Combat tokens from the supply to attack your opponent.

One thing I love about this game is that you can save Coins on your player board in the marked spots from turn to turn. It’s much more forgiving for younger players when you don’t have a coin-heavy turn. This allows you to save up over a couple of turns.

Ally Abilities

In Star Realms Academy, there are three main factions, as shown by icons: A black starburst on a yellow field, a light blue cross on a darker blue field, and yellow-green eyes on a darker green field. They do not have names because the cards in Star Realms Academy have minimal text, simply the name of the card. Everything else is iconography.

This is important because all cards have Primary abilities, but some cards have a second section for an Ally ability. It will have the faction icon in the ability section, followed by more ability icons. If you play another card in the same turn from the same faction, you can use that Ally ability on top of the Primary ability. This also works with Bases.

Impressions

Star Realms Academy, in my opinion, is the perfect introduction to deck builders. It takes all the mechanics I know and simplifies them to make the game more accessible. You don’t have to manage a hand of five cards, only three. As I mentioned above, you can keep up to eight unspent coins on your player board. But if you are about to play a card that would give you more than eight total coins, you’ll want to buy something so those coins don’t go to waste.

I also love that the only writing on the cards is the name of the card. Some popular deck builders have too much text for young readers. You won’t find that in Star Realms Academy. The simple icon sets and limited numbers mean that even non-readers can get in on the deck building fun.

Speaking of how the cards look, the card art in this game is so much fun. It’s perfect for young kids. The faction with the alien eyes has living ships. That could be terrifying in some worlds, but in here, they’re fun and goofy-looking.

Star Realms Academy isn’t going to replace any deck building games in my library, but that’s not what it’s attempting to do. This is supposed to be an introduction for young gamers to the mechanics of deck building, and it does it in spades. If you enjoy deck builders and want to get your young children interested, this is a great entry point.

Start your own journey to Star Realms Academy on the Wise Wizard website, on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store.

---

The Family Gamers received a copy of Star Realms Academy from Wise Wizard Games for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.